I’ve been greatly inspired with not enough time to write, so I’m depressed, moody and a little resentful. Good stuff.
Last weekend I sort of attended the Asia Pacific Writers conference in Bangkok. JP and I were “too poor” to attend the real event, so I made a compromise and paid for a 2 hour workshop, and we attended the free literary event on Saturday.
A friend of mine, Sandra, a wonderful poet who has done a few poetry workshops here in Chiang Mai, went to another workshop that weekend and brought back some writing exercises to share with her poetry/creative writing class. So I feel like I got to take part in another workshop too.
Inspired by Van Morrison’s “On Hyndford Street”, Tim Tomlinson created a poetry prompt which Sandra introduced to us on Friday. It was fun to write about my childhood street. What a straightforward and brilliant idea. I’ve made a few changes from the original jot down. Here is my Anania Circle.
Take me back to Hawaii
On Anania Circle
Where you could feel the light, laughter and sun
Bouncing off the black pavement,
On many afternoon.
After long school days
We played in the parks,
Climbed the walls, trees and dug into the ground.
Across Kamehameha Highway
In the enclosure
As we wished
In the warmth
Dreaming in black, and
Bicycling, running, dashing up Anania Circle and Anania Drive.
On endless Saturdays
Catching anoles and geckos
And gossip from the trees that walked over from
Unsupervised moms and dads
And meeting at tire swing park,
Playing in the pool
Going to the other side
Sauntering up to the enemies
Stopping to taunt the boys
In the days before the Internet sat us down.
Life, the Universe, and Lani 
I pictured it all. I was smiling and then your last line stopped me in my tracks. It is indeed a different world now. Thank you for posting this.
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Thanks. I appreciate that. In our writers group we were all talking about how kids don’t go outside these days. Wow. I’m feeling Old 😛
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That painting is beautiful. That’s how I feel without enough time to write, too.
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I’ll be sure to tell my friend about the painting. Nice colors, eh? Yeah, I’m realizing more and more how important it is for me to carve out time to not only write but play w/ my writing. Cheers.
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That’s actually a really good point. Most of the time I just scrap my writing, but it truly would be worth playing with a little bit. Maybe making it the complete opposite of what I originally envisioned. You have me thinking now!
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This poem has an advantage in that you use some Hawaiian names, so you can say stuff like “Across Kamehameha Highway
“. By the way, geckos ARE lizards. But the other lizards you are talking about are doubtlessly Anoles. http://mendel.informatics.indiana.edu/~samdchap/Project/anolis_home.html
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Yes. The Hawaiian names are an advantage and I’m glad you picked up on that. I love saying them again. Okay, geckos are lizards! Maybe I’ll change it! 😀
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you could say “geckos and other lizards”. I don’t know how it would scan. Or “geckos, anoles, and fence lizards” or “geckos and garden lizards”.
By “advantage” I meant – it’s not the right word – that the Hawwaiian words are evocative and rhyme well with your other vocab.
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I changed it as you were commenting. 555 Thanks.
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Really fun reading your poem after hearing it. It is so song like. Nice rhythm.
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Thanks for introducing it. I’ll keep playing w/ it and tweaking it out. Maybe I should try to be a better poet!
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is “on many afternoon” deliberate? As opposed to “many an afternoon” or “many afternoons”? Just wonderin’.
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Deliberate and I’m okay with it not being grammatically correct. But as I told Sandra, I’ll keep coming back and looking at it again. You gave good advice.
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The final line is a punch in the gut. I like it. Well done, as usual.
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Mahalo 🙂
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